this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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The highest quality American cheese is cheddar and Colby melted and mixed with sodium citrate, which serves to keep it from splitting when melting.
It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and if you've had a nice macaroni and cheese it was quite possibly made with a similar process by the chef, since sodium citrate is a perfectly common cooking ingredient.
American pasteurized prepared cheese product, aka kraft singles, aka American cheese as most people know it, is very affordable, and is engineered to melt good. It solves the problem of a lot of Americans know it's crap but it's not a "proper" grilled cheese sandwich like they had as a kid with anything better, and the same goes for cheeseburgers.
The original American cheese was a cheddar made in America made with annatto because we didn't have the bacteria that made cheddar have it's color.
But most of your question is answered by "it's cheap to make and buy, and for whatever reason a lot of Americans like it". Most of what people call American cheese isn't actually even labeled as such, which makes these conversations fun. It's usually labeled "singles American flavor". No one buys the other stuff though, because it's slightly more expensive, by nearly 50ยข.
I won't touch "pasteurized processed cheese food," but goddamn do I love some deli American cheese. On occasion, I can find an extra sharp one, for great justice.
Worry not! Most modern American flavor singles no longer meet the criteria to be called a pasteurized processed cheese food, and are strictly called "pasteurized prepared cheese product", which is a legally meaningless string of words that only advertised that it contains cheese, and is pasteurized.
It's a vaguely surreal labeling situation.
It's a shame that a lot of people don't realize that "processed cheese" usually just means "melted", not "chemical nightmare".
It's my understanding that "cheese food" is a technical term similar to "cheese product" but is actually worse than "cheese product".
Processed cheese product means it's less than 51% cheese, and processed cheese food is more than 51%.
The key part is that there's no definition for "prepared cheese product". The regulations are specific in the wording, and even the text layout that you can use.
The reason for the switch is the inclusion of milk protein concentrate, which the FDA doesn't list as an acceptable dairy additive for anything that wants to label itself cheese of any type.